Is Reed College really so hard?

Camasite
Sun, 02 Aug 2020 00:39:58 +0000

MyrtleD:

My son says there are two general types of people at Reed. Those who “get it” and are seeking it’s academic intensity, and those who think of Reed as a safety school. The latter folks tend to be part of the 20% of the population that drop out or transfer. They just don’t fit in this intense academic environment.

That was my impression as well. There are a certain number of status-seeking type students who somehow wind up there because they didn’t get into Stanford or Northwestern or the Ivies or wherever. And they find it is just to difficult relative to the status reward of a Reed degree. And that there are too few pre-money type peers seeking finance and business consulting jobs like you would find in droves at say Princeton. Back in the 80s I remember the few students who were angling for MBA programs and internships with high finance wall street firms would even kind of be denigrated. “Don’t be so Bourgeois” was what some students would say. If you want to be a bond trader on Wall Street or something like that, there are better schools to attend.